It is difficult to give a preview of a short story without giving away more than the reader might wish. For this reason we only include the first few lines...

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So: there were no more clams and it was seaweed that Arach thrust into his old plastic sack to make a meal of. Glancing at the low hills that had become his home he realised suddenly that he no longer cared if the seaweed had absorbed the sea’s decaying poison and bound it up in tight amino coils – or that these long, grey tubes with their succulent pods had become virtually inedible… In fact, he hardly cared that his trifurcating jaw had ceased to cope with uncooked sea-salt leather.

His body was already as poisoned as it could be; hunger was at least a human pain; and a fire on which to cook even seaweed! Heavens, how he wished he still had fire!